Encouraging Positive Actions for Animals: What Advocates Should Know About Motivating the Average PersonFrom All-Creatures.org Animal Rights Activism Articles Archive

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The key is realizing that not everyone thinks the way we do, and when
you communicate with your target audience, you won’t necessarily get your
desired outcome by using the same talking points that worked on you.

As animal advocates faced with difficult and heart-wrenching problems on
a daily basis, it can become all too easy to think that the people whose
behavior we seek to change operate using the same type of reasoning that we
do. When we begin thinking that everyone is operating using the same basic
rationale it becomes increasingly difficult to understand why most people,
when confronted with the same information, do not adopt the same behaviors
that we ourselves have adopted.

The often unfortunate consequence of thinking this way is that we become
resentful of, and frustrated with, people who refuse to change their
behavior. And when we foster this negative mentality towards the people we
want to change, it hinders our strategy in communicating with them, and
often makes our work less effective. So what’s the key?

The key is realizing that not everyone thinks the way we do, and when you
communicate with your target audience, you won’t necessarily get your
desired outcome by using the same talking points that worked on you.
You have to know your target audience, and more importantly, you need to
know how they are motivated and thus what messaging and language will reach
them most effectively.

Self-Determination Theory

Here’s where a basic understanding of some psychological principles can
come in handy. A key fact is that people are motivated to adopt, or not
adopt, new behaviors for completely different reasons. Self-determination
theory (SDT) provides a framework for understanding these different
personalities and motivations. There are three main concepts that are
helpful to understand and apply to advocacy work:

People can be either intrinsically motivated, or extrinsically
motivated. People who are extrinsically motivated may be motivated by
goals of financial success, appearance, and fame (for example), whereas
people who are intrinsically motivated may be motivated by concepts such
as community, relationships, and personal growth. Behaviors that result
from these motivation styles are closely related to one’s social and
cultural environment.

These motivations are predicated on what are seen to be three basic
psychological needs: autonomy (the ability to act of one’s own
volition), competence, and relatedness (a sense of connection to those
around you).

Extrinsically motivated individuals may adopt new behaviors through
a process called internalization. New behaviors and values may be
incorporated by these individuals because of social expectations and
standards, unconscious adoption of behaviors and values from others, or
the identification with a particular social group, to name a few. When
someone has internalized a behavior, he or she begins to see the
behavior as a choice that is made as an expression of his or her
personal values. It is believed that supporting feelings of autonomy and
relatedness are particularly important to the process of
internalization.

Case Study: Meat Consumption in the Netherlands

These concepts can all seem a bit lofty and not extremely useful or
relevant, so let’s take a closer look at how these concepts can help us to
understand why some people adopt a behavior, while others do not.

In 2014, Dutch researchers examined how SDT could help them explain why
some people were more likely to adopt plant-based diets than others, and to
determine if SDT could provide insights as to how to encourage non-adopters
to become adopters.

For this particular study, the researchers defined the three
psychological needs as follows: 1) competence: cooking and tasting skills,
2) autonomy: perceived choice, and 3) relatedness: a sense of meaning and
connection to people, nature, or the universe as a whole.

What they found was striking.

Individuals who were intrinsically motivated or had internalized
motivation regarding their food choices were more likely to feel a sense of
relatedness and solidarity when making these choices, and also more likely
to buy meat-free products or carefully sourced (organic or free-range)
meats. As people internalized motivations for food choices, they became
increasingly distant from the “dominant” pattern of eating characterized by
high meat consumption.

Individuals who were extrinsically motivated, on the other hand, tended
to be more likely to purchase instant products and less likely to reflect on
their food choices. Researchers found that this was likely related to a “low
degree of autonomy (i.e. low levels of perceived choice and lack of autonomy
support), a lack of identification with nature, and the impact of contextual
factors such as daily hassles. These circumstances make it more likely that
consumers will choose the easy way and follow the dominant pattern that is
very well supported by their food environment (e.g. supermarkets).”

While SDT helped understand why people make these choices, it also allows
us to understand the needs of externally motivated “non-adopters” and help
identify ways of motivating them to make animal-friendly food choices. Since
this group is largely influenced by their social and cultural environment
and experiences a low sense of autonomy and relatedness, work in these areas
may hold great potential. While the researchers believe more research is
needed on how extrinsically motivated consumers are affected by their food
environment, they offer several strategies which may foster progress:

Movements that are associated with “higher social status for ‘going
healthy and green’” can act as a motivator for externally motivated
individuals.

Cost barriers between meat and non-meat diets can be removed.

The number of non-meat diet options available can be increased (thus
increasing autonomy).

If using this information to develop a Meatless Monday or other meat
reduction campaign, a next logical step would be to test these respective
strategies on extrinsically motivated individuals, and see how each affects
decision-making in terms of meat consumption.

An all too familiar struggle for many animal advocates is how to increase
adoptions from animal shelters. An important component to this problem is
changing how people view animals from shelters. While intrinsically
motivated individuals and those who have already internalized the “adopt,
don’t shop!” message may be “on board” with the concept of adopting from
shelters, extrinsically motivated individuals may be more motivated by the
concept of having a certain type of breed that conveys status and wealth.
The fun video below is the perfect example of a campaign that recognized
this motivating factor, and instead of spinning their wheels with the same
message that wasn’t working, they leveraged this motivational type,
successfully increasing adoptions and improving the status of mixed-breed
dogs in Costa Rican culture! Watch the
video here... "When you
adopt a mutt, you adopt a unique breed."

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